The Age of Ice: A Novel (34 page)

“Why have you kept me close? Why have you helped me? Watched over me? Protected me from cold? Stolen food for me and fed me when I could not do it myself? Why are you taking care of my family for the summer? Why did you give me a ride home just now?”

What was he getting at? “You are a friend and you saved my life. I am indebted to you.”

“Ah, you did not need any saving! You are joking, aren’t you?” And then, almost sobbing, “Why will you not be open with me? Why do you insist on playing these games?!”

His hands were shaking again. This specter of lunacy made my skin crawl. I had no idea how to find a way out of the marshes of his nonsense into a normal conversation. “Dr. Merck, please listen. I am—I am trying to be open with you. You are not making it easy. I beg you to take a break and pause your work on this pump machine. You need rest. When you are in good health, we will talk again, I promise. In the meantime, please, take care of yourself, your wife, and your daughter. They need you.” I stood up. Truly, all I wanted right now was to escape. I thought he’d object to my leaving but he only looked up at me with an ascetic grin and said, “Good night.” Frau Fretzl brought the tea. I nodded and left.

I went back to Sawyer’s. The guests were long gone. Sawyer and I drank some more. “What happened on the Chukchi Peninsula?” Sawyer asked
me one last time. I said, “Darkin. I strangled him. Because—” I could not finish. I tried from the other end, “I think Merck blames me. I thought we all decided on it. That’s what I remember. But now I’m not so sure.”

Sawyer said, “It’s my fault.”

“
Yours
? How so?”

“To land-trek through the peninsula was my idea. I said I’d do it. I told Billings he was a coward not to try, so he tried. Only he wouldn’t take me with him. Wanted to teach me a lesson, poor bugger. I’m so sorry I’d suggested it.”

Oh, my dear Mr. Sawyer!
“You couldn’t have known how it would end! It is
not
your fault!”

But he wasn’t dissuaded.

• • •

When next day I returned to Nikolskoe, I told Nadya that her husband had exhausted himself with work and was ill. She left for St. Pete’s the next day and vanished for a month, or more. I did not keep track, I was busy. I had my ponds widened, I read Count Rumford and Monsieur Pictet.

Then one day in August Nadya and Sophie reappeared in Nikolskoe. Nadya was changed—withered, weary. She sat in the parlor confessing; Anna held her hands. I spied them from the doorway. Nadya was saying, “Carl Heinrich had been having fits of rage. Not at me, God forbid, I know it is not anything I do, of course not, but it’s so very loud and unexpected, and upsetting to Sophie. And he is always so mortified afterward, it is such a heartache to observe him: he begs for our forgiveness and swears he could not help it. I was just thinking that if only we weren’t there, perhaps he would not rage. It is so very unlike him, so very different . . .”

In the background, our old granny housemaid was enticing little Sophie to accept an apple from a shiny pyramid of them towering in a bowl. Anna glanced at me, made a “go away” face.

Later, in her bedroom, she filled me in. “Because a little had always gone a long way between them,” she said as I was undoing laces that held a stocking to her pantaloons, “their union had never been a performance piece that had to be reenacted every day to earn a living. Understatement and good-natured humor did most of the work. Imagine, now he slams doors and throws dishes, then kisses her hands and weeps, like an ill-mannered provincial. Can men change like this?”

“Did Nadya say which language Dr. Merck . . .
threw dishes
in?” I rolled the freed stocking down, and out came Anna’s marble-white leg, still mostly unblemished, toes squeezed together as if afraid—and instantly it ducked under the cover of her shift.

“
Language?
She didn’t say. He is your protégé, you should know.”

I rose, picked up a shawl, wrapped it around my wife’s shoulders.

“No, no,” she responded, “you are not staying tonight, my lord, you are just tucking me in and leaving.”

“As you wish, my lady . . . Even if I kissed your hand and wept like an ill-mannered provincial?”

“It’s not funny. Nadya also says Carl is away
working
all the time. Men don’t change overnight unless afflicted with debt, or lunacy, or—or adultery. Don’t you think?”

“Yes,” I said. “No. Not adultery. Nor debt. What nonsense! Of course we change. Your other leg, please.”

I finished the ritual and let her under her blankets, patted the goose down all around, and planted a cold kiss on her forehead. “Did Nadya say what Dr. Merck is working on all the time?”

“She was not certain. She said he was talking about some kind of a—
pump
? Maybe I haven’t heard it right. Such a peculiarity.”

I straightened up and was about to leave but she held my hand. Somewhat sheepishly, she played with my fingers. “My lord? . . . What does your magic candy emporium offer today, do you mind me asking?”

And eagerly, I said, “Orange sorbet . . . I’ll be right back.”

I would, after all, get to make love to my lady.

• • •

I should have gone to see Merck the very next day, not months after, when I finally gathered courage to do it. I was a coward. Meanwhile, he wrote letters to Nadya, begging her to come back. Nadya showed some of them to Anna—they were profuse, melodramatic. So unlike him. Besides, Nadya’s knowledge of German was not exhaustive, why wouldn’t he write in Russian? Some words were particularly tough, she needed help with them, could we please take a look? Anna, then I, would spread our hands. Perhaps
Smertempfindungschwelle
was just a misspelled
Shmertzempfindungschwelle,
and did not contain a reference to death—
smert,
in Russian. But what was this “I feel
pajwaq
at myself”? It was neither German nor Yakuti.

Nadya went back to St. Pete’s. Then a letter from her arrived, urging
me to come and convince Carl to go to the doctor. “He does not listen to me, but he will listen to you, his benefactor and guardian,” she wrote.

So I finally went.

When I reached the academy, he was in lecture. I watched his delivery from the back of the auditorium; unseen, I watched and worried for him, expecting some kind of accident. Yet he was quite in control, and if he occasionally made a blank pause, it was no more remarkable than a pause of any German naturalist obliged to describe, in Russian, the anatomy of slugs and snails. His chalk scratched the blackboard, pews creaked or a student coughed from time to time—otherwise a sleepy lull prevailed in the hall, with me seemingly the only anxious person in attendance. Finally, he finished the last sketch of a garden snail’s gut, said, “That will be all for today,” and abruptly headed out, chalk still in his hand.

I followed, at a distance. Up the stairs we went, down the dark corridors. He reached his door, unlocked it, entered. I waited for a while, then knocked—no response. I listened—all quiet inside, the quietness of held breath—if I hadn’t seen him come in, I would have concluded he was away. I opened the door—he stood straight ahead, chalk still in his hand, and he did not look me in the face, but down, at my feet. I followed his stare and saw something—a glyph drawn in chalk on the floor right in front of the threshold. I did not want to step into chalk. I stepped sideways.

“Good day, Dr. Merck.”

“Avoiding it, huh?” he said. “Must be a decent rendering. Burns, does it?”

“What—this? How do you mean? I don’t want to smudge it . . . and then leave white marks all over your floor. What is it, anyway?”

“Don’t pretend you don’t know it.” His voice was hostile. The pump behind him had grown. It sat in a cart now, it had an intake hose, two sets of bellows, each connected to a gearwheel, and a fifty-gallon brass boiler ball in between.

I’d thought I had options but I didn’t. No more avoidance. “I promised we’d talk. So let’s talk. What is it that you think I am?”

The words hit him—he backed around the desk and sat down, fingered some papers, his hand unsteady. “You are . . . you are
a part of that power which is ever willing evil and ever producing good,
” he mumbled in German and managed a shaky smile. “At least that’s what your kind is quoted as saying. I can’t believe I used to think you were from the other side. That my prayer was answered. When you strangled that poor man, Darkin, I started doubting myself but still I was so eager to believe. I
should have remembered that the Almighty is not so accommodating as to reply to every medicus in distress. He wants faith and commitment without reward, not in this world, at any rate. It is you and yours who favor immediate gratification.”

At the time, I had no benefit of knowing that he quoted from
Faust—
but no matter. He was close enough: I was abnormal and yes, I had strangled a man before his eyes. Oh, the bitterness! My kindly visions of an
understanding
between us now seemed ridiculous. It was time for a full disclosure. “Fine. And now to the truth. You saw me frozen solid into ice on the Yasachnoi in 1787. It was an accident. I didn’t mean to get entombed like this, but I
did
mean to determine how cold I could get. Why?” I paused. “Because I am someone who can turn water into ice just by holding my hand in it. Someone who can freeze and thaw, and be no worse for wear. But that’s all I am, nothing more. Nor do I know why I am this way. I used to think you could help me understand it. That one day we will be not just cohabitants or fellow survivors—but true friends, more than that—partners, colleagues. I used to think I killed Darkin for the common good. That may well be my delusion, but don’t you dare rebuke me now while back then you stood by and watched, with not a squeak of objection from you! I did not tell you to build this machine—this is
your
delusion, and I am saying it to you now: stop where you are. Go no further. I avoided confronting you long enough, I was afraid, and for that I am sorry. As I am sorry for forcing you to make lies about my hibernation, to keep my secret. Speak up if you have to, break your vow of silence, I have no right to hold you back. Let all of St. Petersburg know that Prince Velitzyn is an aberration. I’ll accept what’s in store for me. But do not
pretend
that I never cared for you, never worried about you, never did anything to help you. I could see all along you suffered from cold more than the others—that your hands were useless half the time. Do not deny that I at least tried—to help!”

Several times during my speech, he shook his head briskly and seemed about to interrupt me. But when I finally finished he was silent. I stared at him, hoping my words were sinking in, trying to discern signs of change. Lord, I almost believed I had turned him around!

He poised the chalk at his eye level. “Why did you sidestep my Seal of Solomon?”

“What? I already told you—”

“You sidestepped it! Demon! You had me there, you really did. I looked
up to you, wore your clothes, ate out of your hand. I owe you everything I earned. I owe you my very life itself. I should be thrice bound to you, you have my family in your grip, my own wife sides with you against me, and nothing I say will dissuade her—but still! You can take my soul when the time comes, but you can’t take just this one last thing from me, you won’t bend me this one last degree—YOU SHALL NOT TAKE THE WORK OF MY LIFE FROM ME! I shall finish what I’ve planned
because
you tell me not to!”

He was on his feet by now, hands shaking. I opened my mouth to argue with him, but he shouted, “Leave me!” So I rushed to the threshold and—shame on me—stomped over his “Seal of Solomon” like a rascally little boy who destroys a girl’s hopscotch figure, and smudged and scoured it with the soles of my boots until all of it was just a cloud of stain on the floor. “What do you say now?” I panted. “What else do I have to do to make you believe me? Do you want to throw a Bible at me? I am not a demon. Here—see, I cross myself—in the name of the Father and Son, and the Holy Spirit, I am not a demon, I am—just—COLD!”

But he only winced as I was performing all these histrionics. He raised his trembling hand as if to guard from sparks and brimstone that might fly from me. “Please—leave me—alone,” he groaned. “Enough!”

• • •

One word from me, and Dr. Merck would have been separated from his lecturer appointment and his pump—and dispatched to a very safe and confined place.

I did nothing.

I saw Nadya before I left St. Pete’s that day. “There is nothing I can do,” I told her. “Not by persuasion, that is.” I left a pause for her to fill in. Her eyelashes fluttered, startled. But she did not say a thing. I could already see that seal of introversion on her face—the seal of a caregiver who knows she will be seeing it through, she’ll be left to go into that long dark tunnel hand in hand with her charge, after all doctors, all friends and benefactors, mentors and pupils, guardian angels and prowling demons—why, the High Father in Heaven Himself—have pigeonholed him as incurable and closed his case.

I feared the coming of winter. I knew that Merck would try to use his pump when thermometers bottomed out, some time around Christmas. I knew but pretended I didn’t, pretended that the obligations of my ever growing, ever popular and wealthy ice enterprise took all my precious
time. I kept busy making ice: a bouquet for Princess Dashkova’s granddaughter’s baptism, then a grandiose arrangement for the ball at Count Stroganov’s palace.

Merck meanwhile (I later learned) had been luring in desperate characters—beggars, drunks—with promises of rewards. They would gather in the courtyard of the academy, by the firewood stacks, every morning—the word spread among panhandlers and fools that a crazy professor was throwing money around for a promise of participation in some trick . . .

This is how it happened: Anna and I were on the way to Count Stroganov’s ball. My “grandiose arrangement” had rolled into town several hours before us with much ado, and was now waiting in Stroganov’s court for its grand unveiling. I called it a firework of ice, or a baroque fountain, or a cornucopia. But it was, I realize now, nothing but a dream about my ice cocoon on the Yasachnoi. It was on my mind.